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“I heard this song,” Suguru says, “about dying.”
His voice breaks the near-silence they’d been sitting in comfortably, more crisp and clear than the occasional spark of the flickering candle on the nightstand or the chirp of a bird outside, audible through the open window. It draws Satoru’s interest in a way the rustling of leaves as the autumn breeze blows past doesn’t, commands his attention when nothing else does.
Satoru glances up from his Nintendo, shifting where he sits on the end of Suguru’s bed. His sock-covered foot gently pushes at the edge of the comforter to kick it away as he oscillates in between feeling a little too warm and a little too chilled; it’s that time of the year, he thinks, when everyone feels that way.
He takes in the sight of Suguru, then, the wide-legged pants of his uniform swallowing up the bottom half of his body as he crosses his legs. He lays against the headboard, half-reclined, his bun messy and pulling. His bangs shift a little with the breeze, too, when it hits at just the right angle to sweep in through the window— he moves his hand from where it’s folded over the other atop his stomach, reaches up to fix his hair, returns to his default position. His expression is thoughtful, maybe, though mostly unchanging. It’s always mostly unchanging these days.
Satoru doesn’t speak in response. He doesn’t, usually, when Suguru brings things like this up, especially not when he speaks with that tone. It’s something he never used to do. It wasn’t until two years ago— when everything changed, when everything warped a little bit— that he’d adopted a more pensive side of himself, something tired and worried and dull. Satoru can’t say he doesn’t understand, but they haven’t spoken about it. He doesn’t think they need to.
They have each other. Satoru tries to check in. It doesn’t work, really.
Suguru checks in on him, too. Suguru’s always checking in. Mostly, though, he doesn’t look for the words to do it anymore; he sets leftovers down in front of Satoru when they’re sitting together. He makes sure Satoru packs snacks for the train ride to and from missions, wakes up early in the morning before Satoru departs to double check.
Satoru doesn’t know, really, what he could do in return. He’s never been the type to pick up on that kind of thing naturally. He doesn’t know if anyone is the type, or if most of those people are just lucky enough to have been born into circumstances to learn from people who learned from people who learned from people, generations of consideration condensed into every act of care provided.
Suguru’s a lot like his mom, Satoru thinks. He’s never met in her person, but they’ve chatted on the phone. Toru-chan, she calls him. Have you eaten today? You need to eat. Has Suguru cooked for you? If he hasn’t cooked for you… I keep telling that boy, if you’re not fed, there’ll be problems! Who else is going to feed you? No one!
She sounds a lot like what Satoru’s heard moms usually sound like. It’s like she was ripped from a movie.
Satoru wonders, sometimes, what she’d ask him to do for Suguru if he brought it up to her. He’s never brought it up to her. It never feels like the right time and, really, they only ever chat when Suguru’s on the phone with her first. Her contact is saved in his phone, but they exchange words rarely.
He doesn’t think she’d ask anything of him at all.
Suguru doesn’t. Satoru thinks they’re just that kind of family, maybe.
So Satoru does what he’s always done. He thinks that’s enough— and when it’s not, he figures it’ll balance out again eventually. They have time. They’ll sort things out.
The room was quiet already, but it feels quieter now that Suguru’s spoken. Satoru’s honed in on him; it’s reflexive, the way his buzzing thoughts soften at the sound of Suguru’s voice.
The subject matter, too, is something Satoru tends not to interrupt when Suguru brings it up. He’s always a little more intentional in his self-silencing with things like this— art, and theater, and stories, and music.
His pitch is perfect, frankly. The tone of his voice when he sings is clear and crisp. Literary lyrical references rarely slip past him, he can count out beat and meter without an ounce of effort, he can point out key signatures and accidentals and personal flairs on pieces played live. He’d learned the piano over the span of fifteen minutes just to fill empty time, lingering in the music room while Suguru rearranged things, prepping the place for the eventual transition into a second hospice area.
We’re anticipating we might need it, considering the circumstances, Yaga-sensei had said. The world’s different now— within the barrier, at least. Whatever happened with Tengen after the killing of the Star Plasma Vessel, Satoru doesn’t know. But they meet more sorcerers now than they ever did before. They make their greetings to career sorcerers on gurneys and in wheelchairs on the way into the medical building, blood splatter covering their visible skin and their body parts halfway to mangled. They’re short-staffed, still. Satoru’s pretty sure the place wouldn’t look so gruesome if they weren’t short-staffed.
Just tell me where you want everything, Suguru had responded. Give me the floor plan and we’ll take care of the room.
And so they did. Suguru did, anyway— Satoru had tried to offer his help, again, figuring his technique was more suited for it anyway. Suguru’s technique usage is limited on-campus, any unregistered cursed energy summoned running the risk of setting off alarms; as such, the majority of his labor is done by hand unless he calls for the barrier to be adjusted in advance. It’s a hassle. They both know it’s a hassle.
It’s fine, Suguru said— says. Always says. Just stick around. It’s easier to focus when you’re talking.
So, Satoru learned the bulk of music theory right then and there. Sat on the piano bench, leafed through booklets. He’d learned to play Clair de Lune. And Suguru had listened to every word of rambling and every note played as he pushed desks about this way and that, as he stood in the center of the room with his hands on his hips and approximated the measurements of the space— another thing Satoru could have helped with, had he felt like Suguru would want him to. Satoru imagined him, then, picturing where the cots would go. Where first-aid kits might be set down or hung up, what space to leave for the few medical professionals they had on staff to come and go and traverse the place.
It took him three hours total to get to a point of satisfaction with the room’s layout. In that time, Satoru had learned seven more songs by heart. He’d mastered sight-reading. He folded pages of sheet music in half, front and back, to tear them apart and tack them on to other halves from other songs. He learned how to play those, too.
He’d tried to compose something himself. It didn’t sound quite right.
You stopped playing, Suguru had said in a lull. Satoru had looked up from the page he’d been scrutinizing, his finger twitching along the corner of the booklet, further abusing the dog-ear of the page that he’d pinched and torn at and re-folded a million times at that point.
I’m thinking, he’d answered.
You’re good at this.
When it’s written down, I am.
Let me try? Suguru had asked. Satoru shifted on the bench, let Suguru take his rightful place beside him. And what he played was… simple, to say the least, a couple of low chords with his left hand to accompany a one-note-at-a-time melody with his right. Technically, it was sound, but not impressive by any means. Satoru figured he was winging it with limited knowledge and solid intuition.
And it was nice. It was sweet, nostalgic. Suguru’s always had an ear for that kind of the thing, working in the abstract, imbuing feeling where technicalities couldn’t.
Satoru had leaned his head against Suguru’s shoulder to listen, realizing for the first time what it was people were talking about when music had moved them, really moved them. And it wasn’t about the complexity in full, or the technical ability, or the understanding of theory— not always.
Suguru picks up on the beats between the notes, determines how hard to hit the keys based on how he wants the sound to ring. He understands intuitively how to manipulate the lingering quiet, the feeling in the trailing off of a chord and the slow transition into the next. There’s no way Satoru can describe the little song Suguru had come up with, then. It just felt homely. As simple as a boy with thoughts that couldn’t translate to words, deft and thin fingers fumbling with white keys because the tremors of his hands didn’t allow for the specificity of the black. It was a couple of chords and a melody short and sweet, like a mother humming over a pot of stew in the kitchen, thoughtless and thoughtful and idle and not. Meaningless in a meaningful sort of way. A delicate speaking to the void, feeling for feeling's sake.
Satoru remembers, still, everything he’d learned that day. Clair de Lune. Sightreading. Chord progressions and key signatures, posture and theory. And Suguru’s melody.
It lives in the back of his mind, functions as a reminder. The feeling, the improvisation, the abstract— this is where Suguru lives. It’s where Satoru quiets himself to hear Suguru’s melody.
“The song never says it,” Suguru continues. ”That it’s about dying, I mean. It’s not like there’s anything special about that— allusion to death implicitly isn’t, like, novel or anything. But I kind of liked the imagery.”
Satoru hums thoughtfully, resting his back against the wall the bed is pushed up on as his gaze slides from Suguru, lands instead on what little floor the small dorm room has to offer.
“It’s, like. The vocals start before the instrumental does, and it’s kind of— the voice kind of cracks, you know? Almost like the guy’s talking. And the lyrics allude to this… song. Not the song he’s singing, but something different. It’s, uh. Like, it’s metaphorical but not.”
“Mhm?”
“It’s like if Fergalicious played every time you made out with your boyfriend, and then twenty years down the line, you’re split up, but you’re— you still have to hear the song sometimes, you know? Because no one’s going to stop listening to Fergalicious, obviously.”
Satoru huffs out a soft laugh. There’s humor to Suguru’s words, though his voice isn’t as light now as it used to be. It is what it is.
“And you— The song is nostalgic itself, but it’s mostly the… memory of it. How the world was when it came out.”
“Right,” Satoru agrees. “Like, the world named Angelina Jolie the Sexiest Woman Alive in Fergalicious times.”
“It was hardly the world, Satoru. That's just People Magazine," Suguru says. After a moment of consideration, he adds: "Was that really ‘06?”
“Yeah, that was ‘06.”
“Hah. Then yeah, I guess.”
A beat of silence falls over them. Satoru glances Suguru’s way again, watches how his chest rises and falls with breaths that seem to come in too slow. Suguru’s eyes are fixed to the ceiling, and there’s something distant to them, glassy. Satoru scoots a few inches closer, just enough to bump his knee against Suguru’s.
“… So,” Satoru says, “Fergalicious. Making out with your boyfriend, splitting up, hearing the song twenty years later.”
“Right.” Suguru sits up a little more, reaching for a pillow to his side to prop up behind his back. There’s a moment of readjustment as he raises a hand to feel his bun behind his head— and, of course, it’s followed by the usual disgruntled scoff when he finds what a mess he’s made of it in his lounging. He gently untangles his hairtie, pulls it onto his wrist, lets his hair fall over his shoulders.
It’s gotten long. Satoru’s not sure when the last time he cut it was. Suguru’s always cut his hair himself, insistent that kitchen scissors and his own two hands were more than enough for the style he tended to keep. It’s not as if his mistakes are visible, after all, in all the layers— and they’re even less so when his hair is pulled back, neat and tidy.
It’s clearer here, when they’re alone together and Suguru’s not quite as insistent on keeping up any appearances. His bangs have grown out, mostly. He has to make more of an effort to keep them out of his face, always fidgeting with them, fussing over them.
Satoru guesses he just hasn’t found the time or the energy to fix them up. Suguru’s seemed tired. They’ve all been a bit overworked, after all. It won’t last forever.
Suguru pauses, mulls over this thoughts. It’s as if he’s trying to remember what it was, exactly, his point was— or maybe even what they were talking about at all.
“The singer— He says it… It’s cutting. Like, it’s sharp, the way the song washes over him. And you usually think about nostalgia as something softer, right? More malleable,” Suguru continues.
Satoru doesn’t. He doesn’t think about nostalgia in any particular way. Suguru’s the first thing he’s ever had to look back fondly on, and even with all the pain tacked on to their life together, they still have their life together. But he listens, still, because this is Suguru’s melody. Suguru chooses where the notes trail off, how loud or how soft they might be, when to leave silence in between them. Suguru says that nostalgia is soft, malleable, and Satoru believes him.
“But the song’s not sharp,” Suguru says. “Everything about it fits. There’s nothing discordant, mostly, and there’s not much… variation, either. It’s comforting, like— like, it is nostalgic, that familiar version of it. And I guess that’s the point of it, is that even the hurt is… soft. The tightness in your chest, I guess, isn’t… novel or unexpected. It’s not spontaneous like a stab wound or something, it’s.” Suguru pauses again, blinks at the blatant imagery he’s portrayed, shakes the thought out of his head like he’s an etch-a-sketch before proceeding. “It’s more like a slice, maybe, like you’re watching yourself bleed out back into the past. Or, like… Something’s twisting you up inside, but it’s slow how it happens, so you don’t even really mind it at first. Like that thing about putting a frog in a boiling pot.”
“That’s an urban myth, but your point stands.”
Suguru laughs. Bumps his knee back against Satoru’s, tilts his head to meet his eyes.
“You’re so…”
“I said your point stands! Your point stands. Go on, go on. Frog, boiling pot.”
“Mm.” Suguru relaxes again, though his gaze once again shifts to the ceiling.
Satoru lets himself mourn the moment of attention briefly, but it’s by no means significant. They’re together, after all, cohabiting in between missions in the quiet of Suguru’s dorm room as if it belongs to them both. It doesn’t matter so much that Suguru doesn’t make eye contact anymore, that he shies away sometimes where he would have reached out before. They’ve changed. The world’s changed. That doesn’t mean they’re any worse than they were.
“But he, uh. He talks a lot about that. About going back to something. And he uses this word— he says it’s a roaring, almost, in the same way he said it was cutting. It’s this… violent imagery, kind of, to describe something gentle, you know? I mean, it’s grief. It’s grief.”
“Right,” Satoru agrees, finally setting his Nintendo aside to pay attention to Suguru in full. He hasn’t been looking at the screen much, anyway. His hands fall to his lap, to the bedsheets. His fingers fidget with them.
“And there’s this one question he asks a few times. That’s the only thing I can’t really wrap my head around in the song. Is it you or is it me? is… what he’s asking, and there’s this whole scene of him being swallowed up by the memory of it all— like, is it him who’s witnessing it, or is it this person, maybe, that he’s remembering? I don’t know.”
Suguru’s head shifts. Satoru perks up, ready to see his face again, ready to meet his eyes— he likes it, how he can gleam so much meaning from them. It’s the easiest way to understand Suguru now, when so much of his body language has changed.
But Suguru’s not looking at him. He’s looking outside, instead, at the trees and the grass and the other buildings on campus. The breeze brushes his bangs toward his eyes again. He reaches up to fix his hair again. He rests again.
“I’m being a dork about this, I know.”
“I don’t think I’m the guy you need to apologize to for, like, rambling about stuff,” Satoru interjects, raising an amused brow as he smiles.
Suguru nods. The movement is small, as if the words haven’t quite registered.
“It’s… about missing someone, right?” Suguru asks, and it almost sounds like he’s asking it of Satoru.
“Sounds like it,” Satoru answers.
“And I think it kind of… It breaks down the structure of the story, maybe, like it’s not linear. Like the nostalgia’s got such a grip on him that it’s like he’s there again. Like that person’s still there to watch him deteriorate, like they’re still there to lean on. The whole time, he’s singing about the past, and he keeps pointing that out. That he feels the shift.”
Satoru wills Suguru to look at him again, but he doesn’t speak the intention. He just stares, a little more thoughtful now than he was before.
“But it’s like he’s still living there, a bit. You don’t really get a sense of who he is outside of it. Like grief’s all he’s made up of.”
“It’s about dying, you said?”
“I think so. The last line is like… It’s talking about the nostalgia swallowing him. Him being consumed by the past. Or— by the grief of not having it anymore, I guess.” Suguru takes a deep breath, sighs it out.
Satoru doesn’t make any more comments. He’s not sure what there is to say. It happens that way a lot with Suguru; when he knows the words he wants Suguru to hear, it’s never the right time to say them. And this, feeling wholly like a perfect time to speak about anything at all, is when he’s lost for words.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s not about dying,” Suguru says.
Satoru shrugs. “I think it is.”
“You haven’t even heard it yet.”
“What else could it be about?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s— it’s about the going away. Leaving something behind.”
“That’s just death in different words,” Satoru argues. Suguru scoffs in response, sitting up a little straighter. He almost looks engaged, now— another thing that doesn’t come easily these days.
“Not always,” he responds. “Not usually.”
“I mean, it kind of is. If you’re reaaaally vague about it.”
“You’re being argumentative just to be argumentative.”
Satoru laughs, reaching over to shove Suguru’s thigh. When he speaks again, it’s through a smile, however small it might be. “I’m agreeing with you. I’m just agreeing more with the you from, like, thirty seconds ago instead of the you from right now.”
Suguru scoffs. Shakes his head fondly.
And they quiet again. Satoru’s smile fades, Suguru’s attentiveness drifts. They settle back into what they were before they’d even started speaking, before Suguru had broken the silence unprompted. It’s what they are most of the time they’re together, now— though it’s not the most different from what they’d been at the start.
It’s a blessing, Satoru thinks, to be able to have this. Just being together is enough. So he wills down the disappointment that comes when their brief periods of activity die down. It won’t last forever, he reminds himself. It’s become a mantra at this point.
“… The song ends twice,” Suguru says, interrupting it.
“How’s that?”
“I mean, there’s the song, right? And then there’s… silence. And then a group of strings starts playing, quiet at first, but leading into a louder—”
“Crescendoing.”
“Yeah, obviously, crescendoing. But— My point is, it’s like… There are the strings, and then there’s maybe this… woodwind instrument or organ or something, and it’s one chord. Just one. It’s different from the rest of the song, light and brighter and, uh, higher. It’s heavenly, right? Like a choir. It’s strong for a second— like, really strong, really bold. And it just… fades out. And it’s over.”
“Mm.”
Suguru finally, finally, turns again— takes in the expression on Satoru’s face, irises flitting back and forth as his gaze flutters across every one of Satoru’s features. Suguru’s always been careful like that, looking at him. He’s always searched for the details in Satoru that no one else did.
“Do you want to listen to it?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Satoru answers.
Suguru sits up, crossing his legs as he pats around the bed for his phone. Satoru rests a hand on his forearm to stop him, procuring the little device from where he’d spotted it underneath the pillow when Suguru shifted. He holds it out, and Suguru takes it with a quiet “thanks.”
His earbuds are tangled on the nightstand, and they’re broken, anyway. The kind of broken where one side doesn’t even really work reliably unless held at an angle, the other side functional but quieter than when it was fresh out of the box. Suguru presses ‘play’ on the song and sets his phone down on the bed in between the two of them, not bothering with the burden that comes with a broken pair of earbuds.
Satoru’s noticed he’s been doing that a lot more. Discarding things once they’re dysfunctional, even a little bit. Satoru’s done the same— who would keep around a broken old pair of earbuds, after all?— but Suguru used to be more frugal. He used to be more mindful of his things, cared more about their longevity.
Maybe he decided it wasn’t worth it in the end. Maybe one of the things that changed about him was that over-carefulness, whatever it was in him that made him so desperate to hold onto broken things.
Satoru glances his way again, finds that Suguru’s looking back at him. At least they’re still okay. At least they’re not broken.
He lets out a heavy sigh, gently pushes the phone to the side where it’s still audible but out of the way, and lays down beside Suguru. He rests his head atop the thigh of one of Suguru’s crossed legs, lets his eyes flutter shut as Suguru’s hand comes to rest in his hair. The touch is sweet, soft.
The song ends once. There’s a beat of silence. And then come the strings, singing like angels until they, too, fade out. Until they go away. Until they leave everything behind.
Satoru opens one eye, tilts his head just enough to peek at Suguru from below. Suguru studies his face again, and there’s a depth to his expression that Satoru can’t quite gauge in full.
He closes his eye again. Presses a little closer.
“I think it’s about dying,” Satoru finally settles on. Suguru cards deft, thin fingers through his hair. He thinks that’s the end of it. The song is over, and they’ve said what they wanted to say, and it’ll be another period of whatever they become when there are no words left to exchange.
But Suguru speaks again, his voice low and mournful. Satoru can hear the warping of his words as if they’re spoken through a smile, and he doesn’t have to look again to see how sad it feels. Music’ll do that to you, Satoru guesses, when the right notes hit.
“Me too,” Suguru says.